'Life of Kylie' Might Be The Fakest Show of The Kardashian Reality TV Empire

As we’ve been promised since the spring of 2017, Life of Kylie would pull professional lip kit re-stocker Kylie Jenner out of the Keeping Up with the Kardashian trenches with a reality show of her very own. We were promised a show that would peek further behind the curtain of Kylie’s famous life, a life that’s so elusive her own sisters Kim and Khloe Kardashian wonder what she does all day because they “don’t hang out” with her. Also promised, was a look at the “real” Kylie who didn’t have to carry Instagram and Snapchat on her back with perfectly coiffed selfies and funny enough Snaps and Insta Stories that made her "seem" relatable. A premise with such promise led me to believe that Life of Kylie, which premiered last night, was freeing itself from the hi-jinks of days past, and would provide us with an unedited, unfiltered, real look into the lifestyle of North West’s auntie, Kylie Jenner. Jesus Christ, was I wrong.

The show is less reality and more a foray into the world of amateur sketch comedy that’s only amusing to Kylie, her best friend Jordyn Woods, her executive assistant Victoria Villarroel Gamero and her glam squad Ariel Tejada and Tokyo Stylez, at least one of which she found on Instagram. Comedy team assembled, Kylie and her chosen family, plot fun and farce to be had around her massive home. The group seems to creative narrative to frustrate the shit out of me, while teasing her BFF Jordyn about setting her up on a blind date with someone who is cuter than anyone Kylie’s “ever dated,” and listening to her makeup artist, Ariel, talk about automatically being in a relationship with someone after having sex a few times. Kylie offers no commentary to that point, she just smiles. Maybe she was thinking about all of the actual fun or silly things she’s done with him in the past. You know, like dance and film Snapchat movies with him.

What’s nice about Kylie’s original Keeping Up With The Kardashian’s home and their other spin-offs, is that the bread and butter there is actually touching on tabloid stories, or real events happening in their lives. Yes, we’re forced to endure contrived story lines like Khloe, Kendall and Kylie dressing up in disguise for a Hollywood Tour ride, but we also get storylines about Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy journey that are tragically real, and make the rest of the show’s shenanigans worth tuning in. But, with Kylie leading the charge, and starting the series with a storyline so contrived and formulaic, we may come out of this show knowing less about her than we did before. There’s no redeeming substance, and even at her “short and sweet and full of excitement” 30 minute episode time (honestly, where are any of those things in the episode, KYLIE!?), it feels too long. Especially since this week’s “short but sweet” premiere was a double feature, featuring the first two episodes. It’s the Joey to Keeping Up’s Friends, she’s a star that should work on her own, but it ends up feeling wrong. Everything Kylie does is overly curated, if I wanted a short and sweet 30 minute look into her life, I’d take 30 minutes out of my day to google her name and scroll through her Instagram. Nothing about this is groundbreaking, it’s just carefully curated moments that aren’t even vaguely authentic enough to leave us wanting more. If this is as deep as it gets, keep me on the shallow end, please.

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In the series premiere, Kylie’s BFF Jordyn brings to her attention a teenager named Albert in Sacramento, California that doesn’t have a date for prom. And, because she’s Kylie and thinks/knows any teen would kill their kin to take her to prom, she decides to set up a surprise for Albert where she’ll be his date for the dance. Tickled with the tricks her production team has come up with, Kylie finds a prom dress, orders a private jet, and heads to Sacramento where Albert is trying on tuxes, thinking he won a free prom look from a competition he didn’t even enter. The thing is, a Sacramento paper reported that Albert’s mother told him there was a family emergency and that’s what got him and Kylie in the same room pre-prom. A mistake the KUWTK team would never make.

Another mistake her extended family wouldn’t make is to crash a civilian high schooler’s prom and then in episode 2 complain about the chaos of being “Kylie Fucking Jenner” in a closed space and disrupting the normal order of society just to say she’s “been to prom.” Kylie tells the camera that she didn’t choose this life, but isn’t a 100% guilty party because she maintains it. It would be easier to digest Kylie’s quandary if her show showed her not being Kylie Jenner. I’d rather see Kylie in therapy, something she wishes for in her first confessional of the show, because after 10 years of doing confessionals for reality shows it’s finally starting to feel therapeutic and she likes that feeling, which is why she goes to her first (kind of) appointment in episode 2. Or, I’d like to see her take her army of dogs to the vet and get to get spayed and neutered, and I’d even like to see her just in the first 5 minutes she wakes up and the last 5 before she falls asleep. Anything but a series filled with the extra overly-produced scenes Kylie, Kendall and Scott are forced to shoot for KUWTK because they’re still on payroll.

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From the looks of the teaser for the rest of the season, what might happen is a slow reveal of the “true” Kylie. Next week she tries therapy and she also tries to reconnect with the Southern California gal that’s just a citizen of the city of angels and not the mega star that’s single handedly keeping the real estate businesses of Calabasas afloat. As Kylie repeatedly says, she’s working on finding the Kylie before fame, which she’s been since she was nine. So, unless she’s Benjamin Button, I doubt we’ll ever get there.

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